Reaction Time
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: When Lily and James died, they left friends and enemies behind in many places. Some of the many warstories never told are when these friends and enemies learnt of the Potters' deaths...
1. Martine

**A/N:** A set of oneshots with original characters, Martine and Pauline Rayner and Angharad Weasley (who belong to me) and possibly Korri Coals if ladyofthebookworms agrees to let me use her for this story- the Kirwins, who feature very briefly below, also don't belong to me -with very different views of the Marauders and Lily and her friends, set about the time Lily and James died. Their reactions; where they were; who they were at the time. **Like it? Hate it? Review and tell me, for pity's sake!**

**Disclaimer:** HP-verse isn't mine, but you bet your boots my OCs are mine. Nick 'em and you won't know what hit you. It may have been a Classics textbook.

* * *

Martine Elena Rayner is just a student. Only a fourth-year.

She's frightened of what her sister has become. Pauline isn't safe to be around, she never has been, but it's worse lately. Which is why she's at Hogwarts, with perhaps a hundred mixed Gryffindors, Slytherins, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs: it's the safest place to be.

Martine likes safety. She also likes lie-ins, which are in short supply at a school.

Which quite possibly has a lot to do with the fact that an early-rising firstie –_how do they do it_? she thinks with irritation, conveniently forgetting that she used to be one- shoving her dorm door open, whooping with excitement, gets a slipper thrown at her.

The firstie's lucky; it missed, or that one missed. The other two, thrown by other girls in Martine's dorm, do not miss.

When she comes down an hour later, fully dressed if messy-haired, heavy-eyed and grumpy, it's immediately obvious that there are two moods prevailing at Hogwarts: the first wildly celebratory, the second subdued- but only the teachers are so quiet.

She approaches Professor McGonagall warily, and asks: "Professor, what happened?"

The Professor looks at her, and seems unusually off balance. "Martine, isn't it? Martine Rayner?"

"Yes, Professor."

The teacher returns to her books, efficiently flipping them open to the flyleaf, checking the names. Ticking the names off, on a long, long list.

They're second-hand books, books that belong to the school because students who don't need them any more have donated them for students who can't afford them or who need new copies.

Martine has the fact that she had Pauline for a sister to thank for an ability to read upside-down, and when she reads Lily Evans's name in this way she puts out a hand, keeping the book open. "That was Lily's?"

"Yes," Professor McGonagall answers and she would have flipped over, if a first-year hadn't interrupted them.

"Haven't you heard, Marty? You-Know-Who's dead!"

"Martine," Martine corrects absently, at the same time as "Missing," Professor McGonagall admonishes, and it's then that Martine catches sight of the newspaper cutting that someone's parents sent them, and she doesn't scream because Martine isn't that sort of person-

_and it's worse when she heard that Dorcas Meadowes died, and when Remus Lupin vanished. When Angie Weasley chose to run away and never come back,__ when Korri Coals went to America and didn't leave a forwarding address, when Patty- when Sarah- when the Kirwins just vanished, but it isn't worse than when her sister went missing, which doesn't surprise her because although she knows it's not healthy to want to keep in touch with friends who were so much older than her she does badly want to keep in touch because they didn't mind that her sister was the kind of person who chain-smoked at sixteen and cared about nobody_-

_and her world swirls and the edges darken and blackness creeps into her vision like moss across a stone_-

-and Martine Elena Rayner passes out and concusses herself on the hard marble floor of the Great Hall: a floor that's as hard as the truth.


	2. Pauline

**A/N:** A set of oneshots with original characters, Martine and Pauline Rayner and Angharad Weasley (who belong to me) and possibly Korri Coals if ladyofthebookworms agrees to let me use her for this story- the Kirwins, who feature very briefly below, also don't belong to me -with very different views of the Marauders and Lily and her friends, set about the time Lily and James died. Their reactions; where they were; who they were at the time. **Like it? Hate it? Review and tell me, for pity's sake!**

**Disclaimer:** HP-verse isn't mine, but you bet your boots my OCs are mine. Nick 'em and you won't know what hit you. It may have been a Classics textbook.

* * *

Pauline Harriet Rayner is just a very low-level Ministry worker. It's all she's fit for.

Or perhaps no, it isn't all she's fit for. It's just that Pauline thinks in black and white when the rest of the world thinks in shades of grey and what is worse is Pauline has it the wrong way round, as far as people like her little sister and James Potter were concerned.

And Pauline can't keep her mouth shut, of course.

She could never keep it shut. Not even when James Potter told her he was dating Lily Evans.

Pauline draws blood when she digs her nails into the soft pad of her palm.

_Not as if she cared. Not as if she was stupid enough to care, unlike her little sister. Stupid little Marty, who didn't understand that they were all wrong- witches, not-quite witches. Pauline wanted all-or-nothing, and what that Slytherin sixth year told her when she was thirteen made sense. "You're an abomination." _

_You're an abomination. _

_An abomination. _

_Abomination. _

Anyone else might have thought- "That's not me." But Pauline felt an answering little chime deep in her mind, and she accepted it, she embraced it. "That is me. That is me," was her declaration of independence.

So because she was an abomination, because Pauline Rayner can hold a grudge like nothing on earth, she did not cry at the reports of Lily and James's deaths. She showed no expression. After all, she was not stupid enough to care.

So because she was an abomination, because Pauline Rayner can hold a grudge like nothing on earth, when the papers for the spokewizard's speech about You-Know-Who vanishing and the Potters' death reach her desk, she takes the quill on her desk and dips it in the purple ink she's supposed to spell-check with, special Ministry ink.

And in the privacy of a tiny grey cubicle, the walls of which were almost paper thin, she writes –carefully, slowly, but in the exact handwriting of one of her superiors- 'play up' by the paragraph beginning the spiel about You Know Who's death, and then 'play down' by the sentences that speak of Lily Evans's love for her son and her husband, and the sacrifices she made for love and made with love.

It is the final revenge of someone who opposes the rest of the world.


End file.
